


As You Will Be

by mariagonerlj



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariagonerlj/pseuds/mariagonerlj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth Hofstadt has always known she hasn't been enough, that she won't fulfill her dreams. But perhaps even her wildest hopes might be answered eventually... Betty Draper back story. Features Don/Betty and Betty's family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As You Will Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madamedarque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamedarque/gifts).



This story may be a little bit rough and I'm not sure I had the ability to polish it as much as I would have liked to. Nonetheless, this is for **madamedarque**, who asked for a Mad Men fic featuring the backstory of some of their characters. Being a big fan of Betty Draper, I decided to look into the back story of how she grew up and her relationship with her mother and Don in her early, less depressed days. In any case, I hope you enjoy!

\---

Your name is Elizabeth Hofstadt and by the time you're nearly 13, you're pretty sure you're a failure by every yard-stick a woman can be measured by.

For one, you're nothing much to look at yet, with knees that get scabby from falls too often and a face that's as wide as the man-on-the-moon's hidden, secret smiles. You're not quite thin enough to wear the dresses your mother wants to drape you in, and however much she might tug and tailor, you know you won't ever be either. Her hands have a habit of falling on you, as though pinches and tugs and twists to the hair might finally set you right. And though she tries as hard as any mother can, you know very well that you're a failure in her cool, sad eyes.

You know you'll never be as lovely as her and you wonder, without even meaning to, what it is that you'll be losing by giving up that birthright.

\---

At fourteen and with a face that's finally started to lose it's baby fat, you let others call you Lizzy. It's better, at least, than the 'Betty Spaghetti' you used to be when you were a fat little bruiser in their eye-line.

You're still not pretty, not quite yet, but you're coming to know that maybe you might eventually be. You're one of those girls who isn't really one thing or another so far, but the bones on your face reveal themselves slowly, and the lines of your dress fall properly for once, without having to worry about the trim little turn of your belly. Over time, even your mother becomes a little less prone to pinching, and less eager to force you to walk miles a day to get you out of her sight.

Even your father notices, grinning and telling you that all that hard work chasing after your mother's car must have paid off after all-- though it's the last lick of hard work _you'll_ have to do if you keep turning out so pretty.

(And though it makes sense, a little part of you thinks: _Then why do you even send me to school? Why do you keep telling me I ought to learn everything I won't even use in my life?_)

\---

Fifteen and all of a sudden, through time's magic, you realize you've _become_ something quite fine. You lengthen and thin and grow breasts and hips, and your curve of your waist inverts finally. If you were to step inside a photo from thirty years ago, you could have been the image of your mother: shining and lovely, forever black-and-white in her beauty, on the edge of an laugh frozen by photography.

She looks at you now with something like pride in her eyes, as though you're finally shaping up to be clay worthy of molding at her feet.

Elizabeth is her name as well, in the middle. The difference between you two is in degrees, and melts further and further with time.

\---

Seventeen and you're a graduate, doing what your grandmother never did and what your mother only accomplished begrudgingly. You have your cap and gown and you smile demurely for photos by a sullen William, knowing your father will show them off for ages at the office, knowing your mother will use it to introduce you to boys from suitable families.

(She always says: what's the point of a pretty face if you don't use it. And Elizabeth, thank _god_ you're pretty. I always thought you were homely little thing when you were younger but you really do take after me.)

You probably could get married right now, though it isn't expected immediately. Your mother knows scores of boys and your father would be happy with a good son-in-law who served with the army and has a good family. You could wear a white dress and live on the Mainline and grow your own little Bill and Betty. You could throw pretty parties and go to the derby and wear smart hats that co-ordinate with every outfit you can think of imagining.

You could do every grinding little thing your mother's done, just to make sure you're like her after all, using your looks for all they're worth to end up like her some night.

And you wouldn't need to go to college to get all of that, like some of the girls your mother sneers at. After all, you're _pretty._ That's your saving grace all right.

You mention your plans, almost casually the day after, at the breakfast table where you always take two slices of toast with no butter, the phantom taste of jam coating tongue and teeth.

_Maybe I'll go to Bryn Maw,_ you say. _I bet I could meet some nice boys there. Some nice college graduates. And it'd be good for entertaining._

_A lot of money to spend for cocktail conversation_, your mother remarks, her mouth turning down. _And I could always introduce you to some nice boys in the Mainline. You don't need to go away for anything._

But your father smiles at you, the way he always smiles when the two of you are getting away with something. And when you grin back, you realize that maybe you're not quite so much your mother as you thought you'd be.

Maybe you've got a few surprises in your sleeve over time.

\---

Eighteen and you're in college, glanced at from the corner of eyes gazing almost enviously. Boys look at you and girls do too, sizing you up by smile or sneer. You wear perfume and learn how to smoke from a room-mate who'll turn tricks eventually. You settle on anthropology as a major and imagine yourself on an island, coconut shells on your breasts though you know precisely how unrealistic that image would be. You dream of traveling the world and circumscribing the earth and doing whatever it is that nobody expects from you here.

Your first serious boyfriend laughs when you tell him, your head resting against his shoulder, your skirt bunched up by your feet. _Betty,_ he says, _why'd you want to do that? I could take care of you, you know. You wouldn't even need a degree._

You close your eyes and try not to imagine the sneers of some of the girls in your class, some of the girls who look at you and imagine they know who you are already.

You purse your lips and say, as much to them as to him, _I don't know why everything thinks they know what I ought to do better than I do. You know, traveling is still possible for me! I could... could... could go off to Paris or London or even in Africa. Go native and study their monkeys._

_And maybe get yourself torn up by a few of them,_ he leers, his hands still on the space between your legs, as you wonder why you even let him there, why you thought this was something you ought to offer almost as a courtesy.

_You're too damn pretty to go out into Africa_, he adds as you go blank, as though it's just that easy.

_Maybe that's what will take me there then,_ you reply, feeling sharp teeth beneath your warm, practiced smile. Maybe you could use your beauty for something other than making _him_ happy.

You both turn out to be right, by the way, which is the real irony.

\---

You never do go to Africa in the end, but in Italy, you're still known as Eliza H. and you do travel more than your mother would have ever dared to dreamed.

You're quite sure she tears your letters up by the way-- if your father even lets her have them anymore, after the tantrums _she's_ been throwing. Not that he's much better when you tell him you'd model, of course-- and for once, William gets to be the gold children as they would have thrown you out of the house if you hadn't moved out already.

Your mother calls you a whore the last time you see her, by the way. She say is almost casually, as though it were a word meant just for you, and one she'd been storing. As though you were selling your body on the streets, rather than just lending out your image to perfume commercials and fashion shows where you did just what she'd taught you to, only for an audience of many.

And after it's over, you wipe her spittle off your face and turn around, telling your father you'd call or write eventually.

You keep your word but it doesn't really matter. Somehow, time flies by swiftly.

\---

By twenty, men sometimes call you their muse, rolling the occasional 'a's' in your name as though they held an indecipherable mystery. Sometimes they want to touch you and sometimes they don't; sometimes they're halfway sincere about their words and sometimes, you want to scrub the upper layer of your skin off from their groping. Just to survive, you learn to flirt even better than you did as a college girl, learn just when to put out your hands and retract your fingers and make mysterious promises you will never keep. You learn from Giovanni and George and Laurence and Maurice, the men who'd like to own you and wind you around their arms like a bauble, sparkling but with a human teeth.

And you suppose you could have any of them if you wanted to-- you're pretty enough and young enough and you know how to make them want you, how to look at them in such a way that they get stars in their eyes and you are all that they see.

Only they're all so settled, all of these men, and you can see their rot clinging. They're all so much like your father, so open and fleshy and cheerful and _American_, even hundreds of miles from the Mainline, and from your mother's dreams. And it's too much to think of giving your freedom up for them, for giving up Paris and Florence and New York for them, and letting all your life whittle by as you have their fleshy American babies.

This is why you let yourself smile at a young copy writer you meet one evening, as you model furs for his company for 3 nights and 3 mornings, as he watches you carefully.

You say, _What's your name stranger?_ And something about his face and his hands, the deep, fierce loneliness in his eyes...

He says, _I'll only tell you if you promise to drop the stranger part. What's the point of making an introduction otherwise, Ms. Hofstadt? Or do you have some other name you'd like to hear from me?_

And just like that, you realize you've meant someone worth understanding.

\---

He sends you furs with poetry soon after, Tennyson scribbled on top of a decent fox shrug that's not half-bad for a man who makes a little under what you make a year. And though you teasingly send it back to him to chide him for trying to buy you already, he takes you out to coffee and then tea and then breakfast, lunch and dinner, hope alight in his eyes every time every time you arrive, shrugging carelessly.

You don't even kiss him for the first three weeks you know him, however much you might want to—however much his lips and his smile and his grin and his words makes you fold up tightly inside. But you know if a man wants to pursue, a woman ought to let him go about his business, let him fancy himself a hunter to your gather, wild and primal and free.

(Who ever said that college didn't teach you anything?)

Over the seventh or so coffee, where you share sticky buns before you rush off for a shoot, you finally ask him something.

_Why is it,_ you start, _that men always want whatever it is that they can't have in their life? Or do you suppose you'd still chase me if I let you already have the slightest of liberties?_

He takes a swig of coffee and then looks up with a grin. _You're asking this of me even though you know I'm in the ad industry?_

You take a careful bite of the bun to show you eat and then whisper: _But maybe that's why. Shouldn't you have special insight into the human haert?_

He grins again, like a little boy in on a trick. _Nah. Not really. But if I had to guess, I'd assume it was because everyone wants whatever they think they can't have… even the people who seem to have everything. Or are you saying that you're the exception to that rule? You do seem to have a charmed life._

And you think of being young and confused and worried and pudgy, wondering if you'd ever be good enough for your mother, wondering if you'd ever earn her respect, ever be half as enchanting.

And you think of being older and discontented just beneath the happiness, worried you'd lose everything you have eventually, worried you'd be just like her—old and desiccated and always, always unhappy.

And you look at this man with poetry at his fingertips, who wrote for a living and wooed you so tenderly and looked at you with eyes that made you feel as though you'd never been lonely or afraid or rejected in the past, who made you want to bloom and be bright, who made you somehow _feel._

And you take his hand for the first time ever and say:

_There are some things that even happy people don't have. And I think my life will be even better if you come into it for a little while. So how about it, Mr. Draper?_

And he surrounds your little hands in his larger ones and says:

_I'd love to, Betty._

\---

These are the things you won't learn about Don Draper until almost ten years of marriage has gone by.

His full name.

His true identity.

The story of his family.

Who he is or what he wants or whether he'll ever love you enough to forgo other women entirely.

Here is what you know about him.

The name he gives you.

The story he feeds you.

The hunger in his kisses as he holds you and kisses you, and the need that edges along his fingers as he undoes the buttons of you blouse and tells you he won't let you go until the very last breath of his life, until he's lost everything.

You almost want to cry after the first time you make love, and only the feel of his strong, calluses fingers stroking your back holds the tears at bay, makes the world shiver and shine, and reveal its shape slowly.

_What's the matter?_ he asks, his voice soft and slurred after it's over. (He doesn't fall asleep the whole night-- only keeps holding you. No one's every done that previously.) _Oh, Bets, don't tell me I made you upset. If I did, I'd--_

_No,_ you interrupt, with your voice and a touch on his pale lips. _No, it's not that! It was… fantastic! It was fine. It's just..._

You don't know how to tell him: I just feel as though you understand me. I feel as though I can tell you anything and you'll echo immediately. I just feel as though, with you, I finally know what I've been searching for here…

And there's poetry on his tongue when he interrupts you with his own kiss, eliciting a mutual sigh.

_Then go to sleep,_ he says, though you know he won't sleep either. _And when you wake up, it'll all be all right._

If you realized he'd be telling you that for the rest of your lives together, you would have reacted differently. But at the time, you only kiss him and smile.

You think you've been set free.

\---

You marry and all of a sudden, you're something else entirely. You're the woman you never met before and a creature even the past can't corral completely.

Strangely, it's your father who has most of the problems, your father who thinks you married beneath your station and met a man you oughtn't have ever considered and wouldn't have even met if you hadn't decided to model for the past two years.

_What kind of man,_ your father asks, _ stands up on his wedding day without even one sunnovabitch who can stand him from his past life? What kind of man doesn't have family or friends or—hell—even army buddies at his own wedding?_

This is the way your father thinks-- your solid, good, loving father who never exercised his imagination or taxed himself to do much more than doing what was expected entirely. He doesn't understand-- _can't_ understand-- what it's like to be sensitive and creative, what it's like to want something more than a nice home and a pretty wife and a passel of picture-perfect children to round out your life, what it's like to know _poetry_. If he could have picked out a husband for you, he would have chosen someone just as stolid and dependable as himself, someone who would keep the plumbing running and come home by seven in the evening and live out in the suburbs in cookie-cutter houses where everything was always so nice and clean. He would have picked a military hero with something more than Don's purple heart, and told him to get into the Hofstadft family business and share things with your brother, who's resentful already.

Your mother isn't much happier and you can tell by looking at her face that she's sure you could do better-- _she_ did, after all. Any husband of your should have at least gone to college—what was the point of paying for that expensive education at Bryn Mawr otherwise?

But at least you aren't the whore of Babylon anymore. At least you're halfway to respectability by now, which is about all your mother's ever dreamed.

It doesn't seem to matter to her that you've always wanted other things. But when you look into Don's dark eyes, you realize even that doesn't need to bother you presently.

\---

Things are going to be so different for you finally.

You'll have everything you want and everything you need and be everything you ever hoped to be. You won't be your mother and Don won't be your father and even marriage won't dampen the adventures you'll have together. He won't be like other men and you won't be hide anymore or retreat from your world or pretend you don't want to accomplish something good and real. You'll live in the city and you'll have children eventually and you'll help Don in his art and send him to night school and stay by his side faithfully. You'll help him with his work and be his perfect hostess and polish his rough edges off until he gleams fully.

And he'll love you forever for that. He's pledged it already.

At twenty-two, your name is finally something good and solid—a Mrs. Don Draper that won't budge from you, that won't shrink or quail or hide, that'll let you stand on your own feet.

It's a name that belongs only to you and you know that means you'll be yourself at last.

You're going to be so happy.


End file.
